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Former PARC visiting social software researcher and startup trobairitz Brynn Evans announced today that she has joined the social product group of the UX design team at Google. Evans says she was encouraged to interview by former collaborator and PARC Principal Scientist Ed Chi, who joined Google earlier this year. (Google Hires Twitter-Hacking PARC Scientist)

If Google is ever to effectively challenge Facebook and Twitter in social software, which is expected to be a key battleground in a world no longer dominated by atomized search experiences online, then hiring leading thinkers could be an important part of the company's strategy.

If there is any doubt about the social Web moving into the enterprise, then the news today from Jive Software has to make even the hardest skeptics start to wonder.

The Portland, Oregon company that has built its success on providing a social layer to the enterprise is pursuing a path that may lead it to a public offering.

Fueled by venture capital, the company said today that it is looking for a new CEO.

Late last week Socialtext's Michael Idinopulos wrote a post with some interesting advice for anyone looking to start a social software implementation in the enterprise: skip the pilot. His argument was that since the new breed of enterprise 2.0 tools are about human interaction, something which changes dramatically at scale, then small pilots were not a useful barometer of future success or failure.

Idinopulos admitted that pilots are great for traditional IT, which revolves around a set of actions that do not change much whether it's 10 or 10,000 people (think billing or adding leads in a CRM). We agree that in any kind of collaboration, the shift from 10 to 10,0000 causes dramatic change. But that leaves an open question: do you still use pilots for your wikis, blogs, and other social software implementations, or are they a waste of time?

Reports of an update for IBM's Lotus Connections software have been circulating since early 2009. Many analysts talked of a major upgrade that would instill the suite with some substantial social functionality for the first time. After surveying the new Lotus Connections 2.5 that was released today, we can confirm those reports.

IBM has seriously improved their offering when it comes to a comprehensive platform for enterprises. While it's not exactly the bleeding edge, version 2.5 has taken software that was really behind the times and transformed it into something that shows real promise for enabling collaboration. Lotus Connections is now available for download for both customers and business partners.

Socialcast has released their official API today, opening up their real-time enterprise collaboration platform to developers for the first time.

Socialcast's basic collaborative feature set isn't in dire need of enhancement through an API. But what it will definitely bring is a higher level of customization and better access to the real-time stream of information it's aimed at creating within the enterprise.

In a new report studying social networking on intranets, Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen asserts that despite broad awareness, real execution of Web 2.0 in the enterprise is still rare at this point.

We've noted Nielsen's skepticism when it comes to Web 2.0 in the past, but it's not outlandish to acknowledge that the enterprise moves slowly to adopt new technology. By doing so, the entire industry receives a sobering reminder of just what it takes to make change happen in business.

As of tonight, Facebook has launched a new beta version of the site in Persian, in order to further enable the flood of news that has poured out of Iran in the wake of that country's contested election last week.

As Twitter became the star platform for Iranians to convey breaking news from on the ground, Facebook has been quiet by comparison. Now, by releasing an edition in the official language of Iran (also colloquially called Farsi), its attempting to capture some of the revolutionary self-expression that has thus far passed it by.

Leading enterprise software provider Atlassian announced this morning the launch of Confluence 3.0, an upgrade to the wiki platform that we named one of the top 10 enterprise products of 2008. The new release significantly enhances the social networking side of Confluence, adding activity streams and Twitter-like status updates.

Atlassian has simultaneously debuted the Plugin Exchange, allowing users to download, rate, and review hundreds of 3rd party plugins, including the popular GreenHopper plugin for JIRA that it just acquired. All three announcements are part of the lineup for the company's sold-out user conference, the Atlassian Summit.

In a recent study conducted by IBM, researchers from IBM and MIT found that the average email contact was "worth" $948 in revenue. This is believed to be the first time a specific monetary value has ever been assigned to social network contact. To arrive at that number, the researchers dove into the address books and emails of 1600 IBM consultants (identities withheld, of course) and compared the communication patterns with the consultants' performance in terms of billable hours, projects participated in, and revenue generated.

Enterprises are hamstrung by regulations and governance policies. It's just a fact of life. As enterprises struggle with the need to remain compliant, the exploding popularity of web 2.0 tools and social applications are forcing conversations about trying to strike a happy compromise. Although the notion of "command and control" is unpopular within the 2.0 community, in the Enterprise it's the law. Strict rules govern who has access to what data and which communications must be monitored and archived (in some cases for years). Complicating matters further, compliance regulations vary from country to country.